Note By Note
by Haelia
Summary: Send me a line or two from a song you like by PM or review. I will listen to the song and write a drabble based on the line(s) you sent! Just a fun writing project. All characters. [Please note I do NOT write Johnlock. Thanks!]
1. No Light, No Light

_You are the silence in between what I thought and what I said._

-Florence + The Machine, "No Light, No Light"

* * *

John was sipping coffee while Sherlock fiddled with the focus dials on a brand-new high-end microscope in the lab at Barts. He was trying to decide whether it was funny or cruel that Sherlock had scared away a student who had been using it by telling him his mother called and that it was about his father. He'd used such an ominous voice that John had nearly believed him, and the young trainee had run off with tears welling in his eyes. Perhaps it was both funny _and_ cruel.

Now Sherlock was muttering quiet admirations at the microscope.

Mostly cruel, John decided, with a side of funny. Yes, definitely mostly cruel.

"Listen," John said, "the case… we're on a bit of a timetable, aren't we?"

"Hm? Oh! Yes." Sherlock hopped up off his chair and came round the table to grab the specimen he'd collected from the crime scene - soil - and started separating a small sample to put on a slide under the new microscope.

Behind him, John heard the door open, and he glanced up just in time to see Molly slipping in. For a half second, he didn't notice anything different about her, but just as soon as he'd turned back to his coffee, he looked up again and did a double-take.

Molly had cut her hair. Now she was sporting an angled sort of short haircut - longer in the front than in the back, and John had to admit it was cute. It framed her face. He grinned at her. "Looks nice, Molly."

"Oh - thanks," she said, smiling sweetly. She stopped at the edge of the lab table and looked at Sherlock expectantly. When he didn't even look up, she said hesitantly, "Um… Sherlock? The body of Mr. Edmundson… are you, um, done with it?"

At last, Sherlock looked up. "No," he started to say, "I still need to…" Then he trailed off, his eyes flickering over Molly's new look. His right eye twitched, and he took a breath to speak. "Your hair - "

Knowing what was to come, John cleared his throat. When that didn't get Sherlock's attention straightaway, he cleared it again, louder this time. That _did_ get his attention, and the second Sherlock's eyes were on him, John dropped his chin and glared. _Don't. Even. Think about it._ He saw Sherlock's eyes widen very slightly - _John, really!_ - and John's gaze hardened. Then, the detective seemed to put two and two together. His focus slid back to Molly.

"...Looks very nice, Molly."

Molly coloured deeply and averted her eyes, fidgeting with a button on her lab coat. "Oh - um - th-thanks. Thanks, Sherlock." She managed to make eye contact for a split second and smile brightly before all but running out of the room.

"Thank you," John said, after the door had closed behind her.

Sherlock only hummed and went back to his microscope.


	2. Welcome Home

_All my nightmares escaped my head, bar the door, please don't let them in._

_You were never supposed to leave, now my head's splitting at the seams._

- Radical Face, "Welcome Home"

Submitted by ballykissangel

* * *

It was 2012 again, and John knew because he was standing in the doorway of 221 Baker Street, and he was staring at Mrs. Hudson, and she was asking him if Sherlock had sorted everything out. She was standing there, _standing there_, not shot, not hurt, not dying - she was here, alive, she was fine. And John glanced at the repairman crouched in the hall, and he knew that the repairman wasn't a repairman at all, but he couldn't say anything. He knew how this was supposed to go. The dream never changed.

He pulled his mobile out of his jacket pocket and jogged outside, hailing a cab.

Sherlock wasn't answering his phone. "Bart's Hospital," he told the driver. He tried Sherlock's number again. Still no answer.

John knew he was dreaming. This was 2012, and he knew what was about to happen, but still he could do nothing to stop it.

At last, his mobile rang. "Sherlock, where are you?" He was getting out of the cab next to the ambulance bay at Bart's. He wanted to throw the phone down and run for the stairwell, go to the roof where he knew he would find Sherlock, yank him back from the ledge and beat the tar out of him. But he couldn't. This was how it went. This was how it always went. The dream never changed.

"This call, it's… it's my note. That's what people do, don't they? Leave a note?"

"Leave a note when?" John's voice came out but he wasn't the one making it do so. He was a puppet on strings, manipulated by this nightmare. Inside, he was screaming, pounding the inner walls of his skull, begging this not to be true. He'd do anything to change it.

"Goodbye, John."

It all happened so fast. One minute Sherlock was standing on the roof. He was alive, he was speaking. Then the next he had fallen. John screamed his name, but it was no use - he was gone. Somehow, he forced his legs to work and ran forward. A young man on a bike plowed him over and he hit the concrete hard, but he forced himself to his feet again. _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock_… "No…"

Sherlock was lying motionless on the pavement, surrounded by onlookers and paramedics, blood spilling across the wet flagstones.

The dream never changed.

"Let me through, please, please… he's my friend…"

But then, impossibly, there was a voice breaking through the rushing in his ears, calling him back. "John!"

The dream fell away around him and suddenly it was all black, just black, and John was trying to push his way through it to the voice beyond.

"John. John!"

There were cool, dry hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake, and John clawed his way roughly back to consciousness. He blinked open bleary eyes, opening them on Sherlock's face, pale and angular in the light of the fireplace.

"You were dreaming," said Sherlock, and he was really there, not dead, not crushed at the bottom of St. Bartholomew's hospital. He was standing over John and very much alive, looking down at him with what could almost be called concern.

John gently shrugged his hands off and straightened, regaining his bearings as he scrubbed his hands over his face. Sherlock was _alive_. He'd never been dead. It was 2014. Wiping sweat from his brow, he looked around. 221B. Sherlock had retreated to the window, and was standing there with his violin poised at his shoulder, the bow quivering above the strings. John reasoned that he must have fallen asleep while Sherlock was thinking.

"Go home, John," the detective said gently. "You're alright now."

And as Sherlock set bow to strings, the first bars of 'Solitary Hill' issuing sweetly through the flat, John agreed that that was a good idea.


	3. Down Boy

_I'll stand kind of pushed, kind of bent on this heavy land_

_I will stand for the sake of my friend, I will see him there._

_Count me down, count me down, down boy._

- The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Down Boy"

Submitted by marylouleach

* * *

Through the haze of dust and the sound of rock grating on rock, Sherlock was able to piece together that something had gone very, very wrong.

He was wedged between two lengths of concrete and twisted metal. It was dark except for the light streaming down from a fire above, and there was a dull, throbbing ache in his left shoulder. Somewhere behind him, someone groaned - John, maybe, hopefully - and much too slowly, Sherlock put it all together. Firefight. Bomb. Explosion. The building had collapsed. The bomb… how had he not known there was a bomb? In his haste to catch the suspect, he'd not accounted for an accomplice. None of the evidence pointed to an accomplice, this guy was a psychopath. He _couldn't_ have known there would be a bomb.

Sherlock took a few deep breaths and tried to assess his situation. He squinted in the semi-dark in an effort to regain his bearings. The weight-bearing wall had fallen in, he could see it nearby. That meant the whole structure was unstable. Combined with the fire blazing on the floor above - Sherlock wasn't sure how bad - this place could come tumbling down any minute. Or it could stand another hundred years. From this vantage point, he couldn't say. _Need data_.

He tried moving, and found that most of his limbs were in working order. The left shoulder was hurting badly, especially when moved, and his head felt a bit banged up, but he seemed otherwise intact. Good, good. Okay. He coughed his lungs clear and blinked dust from his eyes. "John?"

"Over here," John replied, and there was a breathless, gravelly quality to his voice.

Sherlock twisted himself free of a wire rod that had gone through his coat and climbed over rubble and rock. "John," he called again. "Where are you?"

In front of him now, John answered, "Here. I'm… stuck."

"Stuck how? Are you alright?" Sherlock slid down the side of a collapsed wall just before the remaining ceiling above it came tumbling down. He dived out of the way of the falling debris, and the smell of smoke filled his nostrils as he took cover against another large concrete slab.

"Sherlock?" called John now, his voice tense and fearful.

"I'm fine," the detective responded, hauling himself to his feet. He pressed his hand to his aching shoulder. It came back bloody. Well, that explained that. "Keep talking."

"I don't know what to say, besides - hurry the hell up."

"It's good enough. Are you hurt?"

"I… maybe, I don't… I'm not sure. I can't move."

Sherlock considered this as he moved carefully through the wreckage toward the sound of John's voice. Either he couldn't move because he was pinned bodily, or he couldn't move because of spinal trauma. _Focus_, Sherlock reminded himself, as his foot slipped on a loose rock and he fell hard.

John's voice floated out from the rubble again. "Sherlock?"

"Fine," he said quickly. He squinted at the path ahead, and in the light from the fire above, he could see, so faintly, a shock of dusty blond hair. It was bloodstained. Sherlock steadfastly ignored the sudden speed with which his heart was beating, and put all his energy toward finding a safe way through. "I see you, John."

Through the wreckage, he heard John sigh in relief.

When he got closer, Sherlock could see more of John - his head and neck were free, and part of his left arm. He was pinned between an I-beam and the wreckage of a retaining wall. Sherlock bent close and examined the source of the blood in John's hair. Nasty cut on his right temple.

"Jesus Christ, Sherlock," John groaned. "What the hell happened?"

"Bomb. I didn't know until the last second. Hold still." Sherlock began pulling away the smaller bits of rock and concrete to free the I-beam. He got John's chest and one arm free in the process. "Can you move anything?"

Carefully, John tested out the use of his free arm. When he blew out a relieved breath, Sherlock knew that was good news. John passed his hand over his face. "Good God."

"You're alright," Sherlock promised. Now came the hard part. The angle of the I-beam made it impossible to pull off of John. He wouldn't get enough leverage that way. He'd have to go to the other side and push it off, but would that destabilise the rubble above and to the left? Something crackled and crumbled behind him, and Sherlock turned in time to see part of the upper floor collapse not thirty feet away. So his options were obvious, then.

Climbing up and around where John lay pinned, Sherlock found himself a good foothold on the ledge adjacent. He placed both hands on the end of the I-beam and steeled himself.

"What are you doing?" John asked apprehensively.

"Freeing you," Sherlock answered simply. He pushed with all his might, without waiting for John to tell him that it was too dangerous. The I-beam groaned, and rock shifted around it. Sherlock watched carefully, waiting for any sign that the debris was unstable and that John was in danger. The wound in Sherlock's shoulder protested loudly; he could feel blood seeping from it as he applied pressure to the beam. One inch, two inches, three… the beam was moving, but in tiny increments.

Below, John was shifting himself carefully, using his free hand to unbury his other arm, and then working to push bits of concrete and floor tile off of himself. "That's it!" he called. "That's it… hang on…"

Sherlock wanted to tell John to hurry, but he didn't dare divert any energy to speaking. In fact, he couldn't divert energy to anything besides pushing on that beam, so he squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath as his hands ground into the cold metal.

"Almost there!" John said.

Sherlock was just barely aware of the sound of moving rock, of John scrambling out, of curses and groans and a rough cry, and then John was saying he was out, to let it go, and to be careful.

Just in time, too. Sherlock could feel his arms trembling. He flung himself to the side as he released the beam, just narrowly missing being knocked back by its weight, and sat trembling on the rock ledge as stars danced in his vision.

John was calling his name. Gravel was crunching, rock was shifting. And then John was right on top of him, asking him questions and peeling away bits of his bloodied clothes despite the fact he himself was limping and covered in blood.

"Are you alright?" Sherlock demanded when he'd found his voice, pushing John's hands away and peering up into his dusty face.

"I'm fine, I'm fine… you're bleeding."

"So are you."

"Stand up." John reached down and helped Sherlock to his feet, but then Sherlock had to grab him round the waist because the effort had John reeling, probably from the head injury and blood loss. They leaned on one another, squinting through firelight and semi-darkness, looking for a way out.

Then, to their indescribable relief, they heard sirens. The sirens were followed by pinpoints of flashing blue light, just visible through the debris of the upper floors.


	4. Bleeding Out

_When the hour is nigh and hopelessness is sinking in,_

_And the wolves all cry to fill the night with hollering, _

_When your eyes are red and emptiness is all you know,_

_With darkness fed I will be your scarecrow._

Imagine Dragons, "Bleeding Out"

Submitted by Jinx2016

* * *

The bazaar was crowded and loud. Families and tourists pressed against one another as they milled through the stalls, examining fabrics and sampling fruit, fish, and meats. Shopkeepers shouted their specials in sing-song voices, holding up a sun-browned hand for attention or waving the edge of a stall drape to draw passers-by to them. The commotion made it nearly impossible to hold a conversation, much less keep track of anyone.

Which was why Sherlock felt it was the perfect place to hide.

He wormed his way in quickly, dashing through the small space between two vendors' booths, pulling his hood down over his head as he slid through the crowd. Behind him, he could hear shouting, but he pressed forward, slipping between hot, close, foreign bodies, inching further and further into the bazaar. His eyes scanned the scene quickly, his vision blurring as the wound in his side protested, searching for someplace to stop before he fell over and his captors located him again.

There it was.

An alleyway opened up just off the main road, one of many, but this one was smaller than the others. Sherlock found that if he turned sideways, he could just squeeze through between the buildings. He sipped breaths of hot desert air as he crept through this small space, and was relieved to see that it opened up to another alley running along the backside of the marketplace. Good, yes.

Sherlock felt his knees buckling, and he stumbled a little, gripping onto the wall as his knees gave out. Looking down, he could see now that his shirt was soaked through with blood, and that it was starting to stain the top of his jeans, too. It seeped, warm and wet, through the fabric. He sunk down to the dusty flagstones behind a textile shop and tried to tell his heart to slow down.

"This is a bit not good," said a voice, and Sherlock was startled to see John standing before him, bent at the waist as he looked him up and down.

"You're…" Sherlock shook his head clear and blinked. What was John doing here? He was supposed to be in London. He was supposed to be getting on with things. He was supposed to be… oh. Oh. "You're not really here," whispered Sherlock.

Grimly, John shook his head. He crouched down in front of him. "No. No, I'm not. You jumped off a roof and left me in London, remember?"

"Of course. You're safe there." He let his head fall back against the wall behind. Thick black curls were slick with sweat, matted to his head.

"Yeah, listen, don't go to sleep, though. You need to put pressure on that wound." John stood and walked to the edge of the building, peering around the corner. "They're in the crowd. They know you went into the bazaar but they haven't figured out your hiding place yet."

Sherlock sighed heavily. He was so tired. So sick of running. Once, just once, he'd like to rest.

"Pressure," John reminded him.

Grudgingly, Sherlock lifted his hand and tore a swath of fabric off of his makeshift cloak. He pushed himself off the wall and sat up straight, telling himself the pain wasn't that bad, and started tearing the muslin into two strips. One he folded neatly and pressed against the wound. The other he wove around his middle to hold it in place. It went around twice before he tied it in a tight knot over the other wad of fabric. He moaned unhappily and fell back against the wall again.

John walked briskly over to Sherlock and crouched down in front of him once more, examining his handiwork. "Hm. It'll have to do. Looks like about a pint of blood lost. Hey." He reached out and tapped Sherlock's face. "Wake up. Come on, you need to move."

There was no strength left, Sherlock felt. He couldn't move.

"Sherlock, they're coming."

Yes.

"Sherlock!" John grabbed him roughly under one arm, and hauled him up. Sherlock imagined he'd done this to dozens of soldiers in this very country, but that was ages ago. Ages and ages. "Move!"

Without warning, John shoved him forward hard, and before he could even think to react, Sherlock was running again, tearing down the alley along the back of the bazaar.

John was behind him all the way.


	5. Demons

_Don't get too close, it's dark inside_

_It's where my demons hide_

Imagine Dragons, "Demons"

Submitted by Darkest Fire

* * *

Irene Adler had taken out a flat in Adana, Turkey, after Sherlock had gotten her out of Karachi. There, she had built herself a quiet existence - not nearly as luxurious as the one she had had in London, but nice enough. She stayed under the radar. She was The Woman once more here too, but her services were advertised mostly by word of mouth. It gave her an edge, made her seem exclusive and selective, and she was able to charge decent premiums for this. She had made a life for herself.

Late one summer evening, as the last of her clients drove away and the final prayer call of the day echoed through the city, Irene had the inexplicable sense of being watched. She stood in the middle of her sitting room, the tile cool on her bare feet despite the sweltering heat of the Turkish summer, listening. She glanced toward the balcony, watched the sheer drapes flutter in the warm breeze. In the distance, she could see the enormous Sabancı Merkez Camii rising against the dusty sky.

Then the knock came at the door.

Tightening the sash of her dressing gown, she pulled the door open.

There, on her doorstep, stood none other than Sherlock Holmes, returned from the grave.

Irene released the breath she'd been holding, and a small smile came to her lips. "Knew you weren't dead," she said. She stepped back to admit him, and he gave her a smirk and followed her inside. There was something off about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She watched as he pulled a scarf away from his face, shaking dust out of it before balling it up and tossing it down on the nearest chair. He swayed a little, and her eyes narrowed. "Are you okay?" she ventured.

"Of course," replied Sherlock, turning that quicksilver gaze on her.

A thrill went through her, but it petered out when she noticed his eyes - red-rimmed, bloodshot, the pupils blown wide open. Quickly, she scanned the rest of him, took in his gaunt face, his agitated movements, the unsteady way he stood before her. He was high as a kite.

"You've settled in," he observed. "Why Adana, when Istanbul is - oh. Of course. Easier to go unnoticed here."

"Quite right," she replied, with a smile. "Please, come in and sit down." She crossed to the kitchen and took out a pitcher of cool water and two glasses, listening as his footsteps crossed the flat. When she emerged, she found him sitting in a wicker chair on the balcony, staring out at the city below. She handed him a glass, which he accepted but did not drink. "So tell me," she said, sitting down in a chair opposite his, "how did you do it?"

He laughed softly. "It's a long story."

"Okay, then tell me _why_ you did it."

"To protect them," he replied without hesitation. The breeze picked up his dusty hair, gently ruffling those dark curls.

"Who? Dr. Watson?"

Sherlock nodded once. "Mrs. Hudson, too. Lestrade. He would have killed them. The only way to save them was through my own demise."

"Moriarty was real," she breathed. "I knew it. I_ knew _it."

He sipped the water and stared unblinkingly at the great mosque in the distance. His gaze had turned hard, cold, but there was something else there. Without thinking, Irene reached out a hand and squeezed his arm. Slowly, he looked down at the hand, and his glassy stare traveled up the slender arm and shoulder to her face, where it stopped and met her eyes. Just for a moment, barely half a second, something else flickered there that wasn't the drug or the mask of cold indifference… Irene thought that maybe, just maybe, it was loneliness.

"Would you like to stay here tonight?" she asked, very softly. She smiled thinly. "From one dead person to another… you'd be safe here. A night's rest could do you wonders."

A wry smile turned up one corner of Sherlock Holmes' mouth. "From one dead person to another… I think you are correct." He turned his gaze once more on the city, sighing deeply as the crash started to descend on him. The setting sun cast his angular face in harsh red light, and in a quiet, relieved voice, he said, "Thank you."


	6. Just So

_Black turns beamy bright_

_Turning on the light_

_Today is gonna be the day_

_You hear somebody say_

_We need you wide awake_

- Agnes Obel, "Just So"

* * *

Sherlock was in a rare moment of acquiescence to his transport's demands, lying facedown on the couch in a near-coma, when someone's hand splayed over his back and shook him roughly. Peaceful blackness gave way to brightness and sound, and Sherlock groaned. "Wake up," a familiar voice was demanding. "Wake up, Sherlock."

"No," the detective replied, his voice rough from sleep. He buried his face deeper into the cushions, twitching the offending lurker off of him.

In response, John's hand clamped down around his shoulder, shaking him again, harder. "_Client_, Sherlock," he hissed.

In a moment, Sherlock had shot upright, back ramrod straight as he adjusted his wrinkled clothes. He ran a hand through his sleep-matted hair, further messing it up, and now it stuck up in all directions. "Yes," he said, clearing his throat, looking to the young woman who sat across from him. "Start from the beginning. Don't be boring."

* * *

John could feel cold, damp ground beneath his back, dew seeping through his light jacket and Oxford shirt to chill his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut, gathering the strength to move, but finding that the epicentre of pain in the back of his skull was too much to ignore.

Vaguely, he heard the crunch of footsteps in the dirt and gravel, then the silky-smooth rustle of fabric, and suddenly someone was tapping his face. "Hey, John." Lestrade's voice sounded faintly nervous. "John?"

John forced his eyes open, and his vision burst into a million pinpoints of bright light. He closed his eyes again.

Sherlock's breathless voice and heavy footfalls echoed from off to John's right. "Donovan's got him. Is John…?"

"I'm fine," John ground out, rather wishing everyone would just be quiet for a moment. He blinked his vision clear, and focussed on the two faces swimming above him.

Sherlock stared back at him critically. "Work to do, John. You need to get up."

* * *

Greg was looking forward to sleep. After the frenzy of activity of his most recent case at work, he'd finally - _finally_ - managed to close a weeklong murder investigation and go home. He hadn't seen his flat all week, nor laid his head down on anything more forgiving than a camp bed at the Yard. So, even though he was also sore and hungry and in desperate need of a shower, sleep was the only thing on Greg's mind when he stumbled through the door.

He stepped out of his shoes in the hallway, abandoned his coat on the kitchen table, unthreaded his belt onto the bedroom floor, and collapsed into bed at last. He didn't even bother crawling under the duvet. He just buried his head in his wonderfully soft pillows and stared blearily at the clock until his eyes drifted shut of their own accord.

He'd been asleep less than twenty minutes when his phone rang, buzzing noisily in his pocket to the rhythm of _Fur Elise_. Oh, this had better be important. Greg rolled onto his back and wormed his phone out of his pocket, clicking the answer button and lifting it to his ear without even bothering to see who was calling. "What," he grated, his voice somewhat muffled by pillows and exhaustion.

Sherlock's voice was deep and animated in his ear. "It was the sister, in central London, with the penknife. You see, the blood on the windowsill wasn't hers, it was the husband's, so that absolves him since he couldn't have killed anyone with his hand cut up like that. Obvious. And since we know the victim couldn't have stabbed herself and then carved satanic poetry into her skin posthumously, that leaves only the sister. Her fingerprints _were_ on the coffee table, after all."

"What - the hell - are you on about?" Greg growled irritably. It sounded like a case, but he could not devote any more brainpower toward figuring out which one.

"The cold case you gave me this morning. From the 1963. I've solved it. Weren't you listening?"

"You phoned to tell me you've solved a cold case? From the sixties?"

"Yes." A long pause. Greg could just imagine Sherlock's disdain as he said, "Were you _sleeping_?"


End file.
